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Tuesday, January 04, 2011

The Church Shop Sketch

As I was conversing with some atheists the other day, I managed to make one of them realize that the Church had actually made some useful contributions to society - a concept he was initially loathe to admit.

He remarked that if science were truly a child of Catholic Faith, then it was the greatest thing the Church had done, and it should toss out all those other antiquated doctrines that weren't helping humanity. So, I had to ask:

Which ones?

You say science is a far greater contribution than anything else Christianity has come up with.

Even greater than the ideas of:(1) personhood,(2) equality of all,and(3) individual rights given not by government but inherent to each person because it derives from God?

Do you think THESE concepts have any value? Because they are all uniquely Christian as well.

Why do you think we stopped human sacrifice? What difference does it make to a Christian if the pagans want to sacrifice one another?

According to Christian theology, we are all brothers, sprung from the same parents, and thus your baptismal status is immaterial. I have a duty to save you from an unjust death even if you aren't a Christian.

Is THAT worth anything, Pikeman?

All the Christian dogmas are tightly tied in with the above ideas. Throw away those other dogmas and you weaken these."

And it suddenly occurred to me that I'd seen this conversation before.Monty Python had already examined this at enormous philosophical depth.

Imagine the Church as the bookshop owner, and the non-believer as the customer: